All automatically created products will include the name and SKU as sent from the selling channel. By default, ShipStation uses the product SKU as the unique identifier for each product record, unless you change this in your store settings.

Identify Products by SKU or Name

Before importing your products, determine if you need them to be uniquely identified by SKU or by Name (we recommend by SKU, which is the ShipStation default setting).

If you wish to identify products by Name instead, do the following:

Go to Settings > Selling Channels > Store Setup.

Click Edit for the store whose products you are working with.

Go to the Products tab.

Select Product / Listing Name under Products for this store are uniquely identified by this.

Click Save Changes.

This setting affects how ShipStation recognizes new products and applies product defaults to orders. When changing this option, the change will affect products importing in the future, and will not retroactively affect already imported products.

Add Products Individually

Add products individually to ShipStation with the following steps:

Go to the Products tab.

Click New Product.

Enter the Product Name and SKU.

SKU Cannot Be Edited!

The SKU cannot be edited after saving. However, all other options in the product record can be adjusted after saving.

Open the CSV using a spreadsheet-editing program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, then delete the sample data.

Do Not Change the Product CSV Header Row

Do not make any changes to the text or change the order of the columns in the header row (row 1) of the pre-formatted CSV template. Doing so will cause the product import to fail.

Enter your product information into the appropriate fields on the CSV.

Name and SKU are required fields. The file will not import without something included in the Name and SKU fields. All other information is optional.

Save the CSV file with a new name. Return to the Product Import pop-up in ShipStation.

Click Select File and choose the file from your computer.

Select the options for the import.

Identify your products:

by SKU (recommended) - or -

by Name.

Update product information if the products already exist

- or -

Ignore any products that already exist (only new products will be imported)-.

(If you have not imported any products yet, use the default setting.)

Click Start Import.

Once the import process begins, it may take some time to complete, depending on the number of products in the CSV. You can close the window and continue working within ShipStation while the import works in the background. An alert will pop up when the process is finished.

If your import fails, you will receive an import failure message that indicates the potential reason. See the Product Imports Troubleshooting article for steps to troubleshoot any errors you may encounter.